


The Show Goes On

by MandaDVM



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Backstory, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MandaDVM/pseuds/MandaDVM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tommy's adopted? I had no idea."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. The characters depicted in this work of fiction are based only loosely on real people and nothing that happens in this story has happened or will happen in real life. Everything is purely fictional. Also, it has not been beta'd so any mistakes are mine.
> 
> Quick note: at the beginning of this story, it is assumed that Adam and Tommy have recently gotten together, though it is not really central for the story just yet. Just in case that wasn't clear.

“Did you suspect?” Leila asked, stealing a glance over her mug of coffee. “That he might end up with a guy, I mean.”

“Of course,” Dia’s smile was almost smug but her blue eyes sparkled in the dim light of the poorly populated little coffee shop. “I mean, we tried to not, like, assume anything… and he always insisted he was straight – and maybe he mostly is, I don’t really know – but we always had kind of an idea that he might like guys a little more than he would admit.”

“A mother knows,” Leila agreed sagely, remembering all too well her own son’s struggles with his sexuality. “Did you ever say anything?”

“A few times. When he was in middle school – it was a Catholic school, you know – he was caught making out with a classmate of his and I kind of just sat him down and asked what he was doing. He said he was trying to piss off the church,” she frowned in that disapproving way that only mothers truly know how, “and I didn’t think twice about that, he was always angry that I had him in Catholic school, so in middle school he made it his life goal to get kicked out so I would have to send him to a ‘normal’ school.”

Leila laughed.

“We didn’t think a whole lot of that,” Dia continued, “but we got a little bit concerned after that, in high school. There was this boy – Ryan, I think his name was, he was such a troublemaker! – and Tommy was always inviting him over to hang out or whatever,” she rolled her eyes. “I walked in on them making out at one point, I think they must have been about 16 or 17, I’m not really sure, but I had the boy leave and I had Ron sit Tommy down and kind of talk it out a little bit… I’m not sure how it went, he never gave me the details,” she threw her hands up in exaggerated frustration, “but I mean, Tommy has always kind of been messing around with guys, so this whole thing with Adam wasn’t exactly a big surprise.”

Having said all of this in a single breath, Dia paused for a moment but started back up before Leila had a chance to jump back in. “After that it seemed like every once in a while we would get wind of him making out with his roommate or a friend or whatever – people talk in Burbank, you know – and I mean, we always just kind of assumed that he had been drinking – and maybe he had, who knows – but we never really talked about it again. We might have dropped a hint every once in a while but he never took the bait, so it never came up in conversation. He had a few girlfriends here and there, so we sort of just figured he knew what he was doing.”

She took a breather and sipped at her coffee.

“Well—“ Leila began.

“But you know,” Dia continued in a whisper, leaning forward and glancing around to make sure they were alone. The lone waiter was on the other side of the café, texting. “I always had this thought in the back of my mind that maybe he does like guys – like, maybe he’s bi or something – but he was scared to let it get any further.”

Her voice dropped even further and Leila had to lean forward to catch what she said, “He had a rough life, you know, before we took him in. He was only three years old when we got him but he had already been through a lot and I don’t know all of the details, but I know that he was, like, treated pretty bad before we got ahold of him and he was really nervous around men for quite a while.”

Leila stared, startled. “Tommy’s adopted?” she asked. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah,” Dia said, her voice returning to normal. “We don’t talk about it much – it’s not really important, you know, he’s as good as blood – but he came to us through a foster agency that I worked at. We didn’t really intend to adopt him but we got so attached to the sweet little guy. He came from a pretty bad situation. Like I said, I don’t know a whole lot about the goings-on before he was rescued but he was in a terrible state when they found him. Skittish as a beaten horse.” She shook her head and sighed. “It took basically forever to get him to where he felt comfortable with people, men especially. You have no idea.”

While Leila digested all of that, Dia changed the subject and their conversation drifted around and eventually lulled into an easy, comfortable silence. After a while the two parted ways, hugging one another tightly and promising to catch up again soon.


	2. Just Lift Your Arms Higher

Dia’s heart clenched painfully at the sight of the small boy, tiny even for his age of about three years. His brown hair had been shaved off – it had been deeply matted and not even worth trying to save, she had been told – and his wide brown eyes were staring back at her in a bizarre way that was both frightened and at the same time almost resolved to his fate. He had stuffed most of his hand into his mouth and was chewing slowly, just for something to do, a habit grown from boredom.

He was sitting with his back to the corner in the room, keeping his doe eyes on anybody that moved and tensing whenever anybody drew near, but otherwise holding still but for the motions of his mouth. His too-thin body looked fragile even from halfway across the room and Dia was afraid that if she were to try to pick him up he might break. She had yet to try to approach the boy – he was skittish, she knew – and she thought it best to wait for one of the women there who had already spent time with him.

She glanced back down at the clipboard with the child’s paperwork attached and leafed through it again, face grim. She had been working primarily as a secretary at the foster care center for a couple of years now and this was one of the worst cases she had ever seen come through. A few words jumped out at her from the pages, almost snarling in their cruelty: abandoned… neglected… beaten… Her eyes stung from the sudden prick of tears.

“Dia?” She looked up. Sarah, a social worker that she had worked with on many occasions, was smiling kindly at her from the doorway. She walked over, her own clipboard held against her chest, and knelt down between Dia and the boy, eyes on him. Dia looked at the child too.

He had stopped chewing and was staring, stock-still with his mouth still in his hand, at Sarah. He seemed frozen.

“Hey there,” she murmured in a soothing tone, her voice almost musical. “How are you doing, sweetie?”

He didn’t blink but he slowly removed his hand from his mouth, his jaw staying slack like he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing.

“Can you come over here please?” Moving slowly, careful not to startle him, she pulled a juice box out of her coat pocket and held it out for him to see. His eyes snapped to the juice, back to Sarah’s face, and then came to a rest back on the juice, both hands clutching hopefully. Sarah slowly eased herself into a more comfortable position sitting cross-legged and Dia followed suit behind her.

It was several long moments before the child began to crawl forward cautiously, pausing every few seconds to lift one hand and clutch at the air in front of him as if trying to summon the juice by sheer willpower alone. Eventually their patience paid off and he reached her. She pulled away just long enough to pull the straw off and pop it into the hole for him before she handed it to him. He snatched it out of her hands like she was about to pull it away again and he began drinking heartily, falling back onto his bottom.

“He has strong hands,” Dia commented, motioning toward the indentations his tiny fingers were making in the box.

Sarah smiled and, rising back onto her knees, reached forward and picked the youngster up, ignoring his shriek of protest as he almost dropped his juice. She stood up and Dia did the same, coming over and finally getting a close-up look at the boy, smiling kindly at him as she ran her eyes over his face, noticing the faded remnants of bruises all along both cheeks and his temple. He frowned dubiously back at her.

“We think he’s about three years old,” Sarah explained. “but he doesn’t appear to talk at all and he’s really small and a little on the weak side right now. He doesn’t have a name that we know of either. A few names were given to us by the natives of the neighborhood we found him in but he doesn’t respond to any of them.”

“Where’s he from?”

“He’s local. We found him in LA about six weeks ago. He’s been staying with Jodi since then. She can’t keep taking care of him though,” she shifted his weight and he clutched onto her tighter with his free hand. “She already has her hands full with her lot and the two from last year. We’re looking for a long-term placement, preferably someone with only one or two older kids.”

Dia’s eyes darted up from the boy to Sarah, who was smiling hopefully at her. “Oh no—“

“Dia, please,” she interrupted, her voice taking on a pleading tone. “You said a few months ago that you wanted to foster and your girl is – how old, ten?”

“Eleven,” Dia muttered automatically. “Lisa’s eleven.”

“That’s perfect! She’s old enough that she can help out and she’ll know better than to mess with him when he needs to be left alone—“

Dia was shaking her head helplessly. “My husband would never agree—“

“Call him.”

“But—“

“Now.” Sarah’s eyes were hard, daring Dia to argue. She had been over to the Ratliffs’ house a few times and knew Ron almost as well as she knew Dia – she already knew what the answer would be. They had discussed the idea of having another child months ago and he had seemed very keen on the idea at the time.

Heaving a dramatic sigh, Dia walked over to the phone and dialed her husband’s work number, glancing over her shoulder to realize with a start that Sarah had followed and was standing right behind her, waiting. It was ringing.

“Ron’s Automotive, how can I help you?” Her husband’s voice was muffled over the static of the line and the sound of his auto shop in the background.

“Hey babe,” Dia greeted. “I have to ask you something.”

“Sure, hang on.” He went silent for a moment and then most of the background noise faded and he was back with a quick, “Okay, shoot.”

“Um, I don’t really know how to say this… you know how we were talking about maybe fostering a kid or adopting or something? Well, there’s a little boy at the center that needs a place to stay right away. Sarah wants me to take him,” she finished, chewing her lip. There was a moment where she held her breath and in that instant she realized that she was hoping he would agree.

“A boy? How old?”

“About three?” She glanced at Sarah to confirm and was rewarded with an eager nod.

“Is he cute?” He couldn’t conceal a good-natured laugh and Dia let slip a giggle of her own – that was a yes.

They finished up their conversation, Ron insisting that he wanted to meet the boy before agreeing for sure, and Dia hung up and turned to Sarah with a grin.

“He’ll come by after work, in an hour or so,” she told Sarah.

She turned her attention back to the boy who was petting Sarah’s hair, seemingly entranced. She walked up to them and the boy looked up, his attention on her immediately, his body tensing. She held her hand out to him, palm up, like she was allowing a dog to take in her scent. He stared at it like it had caught fire and then, finally, reached his hand – the one not still holding his juice box protectively – to tightly grasp her finger.

She let her eyes move from their joined hands to his face and their eyes connected and she smiled a genuine smile. He was putting his trust in her, she could see that, and she was determined not to let him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters should be longer from here on out. Also, story title and all chapter titles from Lupe Fiasco's song "The Show Goes On."

**Author's Note:**

> This has actually been running around in my head for months now, so it feels pretty good to get the damn thing written. :) There will be a fair amount of chapters but I'm not sure how many just yet. It is not really meant to be 100% realistic so if there's something that makes you think, "Hey, that's not how that would happen in real life!" feel free to mention it but probably I'll just ask you to play pretend with me. Feedback is sincerely appreciated. <3 Also, I apologize for my overuse of commas and other assorted punctuation.


End file.
